A Christian fable with a clever high concept, David Gregory's Dinner with a Perfect Stranger is looking like a major crossover title for WaterBrook Press, the evangelical division of the Doubleday Broadway group. Enthusiasm from the company's sales reps prompted Doubleday to up the first printing for the $12.95 small-trim hardcover to 180,000 copies, compared to WaterBrook's more typical runs of 15,000 to 20,000. The book's publication was also moved up to July 12, in time to benefit from the high traffic related to the July 16 laydown of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, although there is some question how much crossover there will be between the two audiences.
The premise involves a Cincinnati workaholic who accepts what seems like a joke invitation to have dinner with Jesus, who appears in an upscale Italian restaurant with a short haircut and Brooks Brothers suit. "It's a quick read and has a nice jacket. I can see people reading it because it's small and appealing," said Mary Catherine Dean, speaking on behalf of the Christian wholesaler Cokesbury.
In an effort to generate strong pre-pub interest in CBA and general trade accounts, Doubleday and WaterBrook's marketing and publicity departments did a whopping 10,000-copy galley distribution through Cokesbury, which is affiliated with the United Methodist churches. That effort, which included a personal appeal from Cokesbury's director of store sales, Jeff Barnes, was focused on ministers attending 35 of the church's 70 annual conferences in May and June. It also involved an offer for a 25% discount on bulk orders for the book made before the end of each conference.
In addition, Doubleday and WaterBrook mailed 7,000 galleys to trade booksellers, clergy, hospice workers, Christian educators and companies, and to the media. Taking a page from Doubleday's marketing strategy for Mitch Albom's Tuesdays with Morrie, the galley push also included 3,000 response cards with the galleys that not only asked for feedback from early readers but for the name and address of one person who might also like the book.
And in an unusual pre-pub outreach to readers, Doubleday placed 7,500 copies of a one-chapter excerpt from the book at Borders, on a religion endcap, in the month before publication, as a free giveaway for customers.
Printing so many galleys and excerpts is a risk, acknowledged Michael Palgon, deputy publisher at Doubleday Broadway. But he said that "the reading experience is so positive—even from indie stores, who tend not to embrace books like this—that we knew that we had to put this in as many hands as we could."
